Introduction

Abstract

The selection of political leaders is an ancient activity. ‘Leaders’ predate ‘parties’ by several thousand years and Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Chinese and Greeks were devising means of producing leaders long before the intricacies of Labour’s electoral college or the Conservatives’ 15 per cent rule came to light. As the Palm Sunday Homily suggests, many of the issues involved in the selection of a leader are eternal: who should be chosen, how should the person be chosen and, once chosen, how secure should the leader be permitted to be?

No man can make himself King, but the people has the choice to choose as King whom they please; but after he is consecrated as King, he then has dominion over the people, and they cannot shake his yoke from their necks.